


to know the edge

by buttheyrebrothers



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 13:10:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6052792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttheyrebrothers/pseuds/buttheyrebrothers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam kills. Vampires, Werewolves, demons.</p><p>Or does he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	to know the edge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dollylux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/gifts).



> Written for the Wincest Love Week.

_“The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”_   
\- Hunter S. Thompson

Mary Winchester is killed by an electrical fire. She and John had another fight that day so he has been out to one of the bars in town. He comes back to the fire and rescue service already on their lawn and finds paramedics taking care of his boys. Both are wrapped up in warm blankets, with soot smudges on their round little faces. Clinging to each other. Mary is nowhere to be found.

Their last words were that of a fight and John will never forgive himself for that.

The Winchesters try to cope. John turns to alcohol and Dean turns to Sammy. That’s how it is for the years to come. John tries, he does. But the guilt that is weighing him down makes it hard to look his sons in the eyes. If he had been home, if he had been there, maybe he could have saved Mary. Saved their mum. It is a heavy weight to live with. Whiskey helps. The boy’s resemblance to Mary doesn’t. So he chooses to look away more often than not.

Dean misses their mum. He also misses their dad. But he has his little brother to take care of, so he does that. He made a decision that night and even at such a young age he understands what he has chosen. When he had woken up that night it was to Sammy’s cries. Dean had noticed the smoke and the heat so he had gone straight to the crib and carried Sam to safety. Not once did he think of his mum before they were out of the house and safe. There was no place for such thoughts, Sam the only thing on his mind. That night he dedicated his life to his little brother.

Sam grows up without a mum but with a Dean. He is his mother, father, best friend, confident, protector, partner-in-crime and everything else in between. Dean is just _his_. No one has any right to him but Sam. No one is allowed to come between them. Of course, he is Dean’s too. He won’t talk to anyone else at school (or anywhere else for that matter). There is just no point. He saves his words for Dean, all of them. As he does anything else. What use are steps if they don’t carry him towards his big brother? Whose lips would he want to taste but Dean’s? Whose body would he want to feel against him, inside of him, if not the one that carried him out of a burning house all those years ago? It is him and Dean against the world.

They carry on. A broken man and his bent sons. John, who works odd jobs that makes them move across the country and takes him away for days at a time. Who is passed out drunk most of the other ones. Dean and Sam, who live in each other’s pockets, ignorant of the odd looks and curious whispers. There is always a new town, a new school and new people anyway.

_The Winchester boys are awfully close._

_Have you seen the way the older one looks at his brother?_

_No, but how the younger one looks at anyone that comes near the other. It’s terrifying._

They ignore them until people start to disappear.

The police say there is no apparent pattern. They’re mostly young, two girls and one guy from their high school.  But also the cute barista from the local coffee shop and the smarmy middle-aged man three houses down their street.

It doesn’t take a genius to put the pieces together.

“Sammy, you gotta stop. Someone will catch you and they will take you away.” No questions, no accusations. Just pleads to stop so they won’t take Sam from him. Insanity seems to run in the family.

Sam doesn’t stop.

A trail of blood follows them wherever they go. It is an amber colored miracle that John hasn’t noticed anything yet. Dean is not sure how much more time they have. Fear and guilt gnaw at the seams of his mind, which becomes more frayed as the months and years pass by. To protect itself from the painful claws of lucidity his mind comes up with stories.

The people his brother kills are monsters. Demons, vampires, werewolves, ghouls. Supernatural beings, out to kill innocent people. His brother is a hero who has to kill to save their lives. He's the one cleaning up behind.

The fragile shell of sanity comes tumbling down the day their father finds blood on Sam’s clothes. He asks Dean about it first which saves his life. Dean tells the story of a bar fight. Sam had stood up for a poor girl who was being harassed by some rowdies.

He packs some of their meager belongings, packs Sam, and takes off into the night. It’s always been him and Sam against the world anyway.

Sam doesn’t ask what happened and Dean doesn’t tell.

Dean kills his first werewolf a month later.


End file.
